Unmanned flying vehicles typically have control units with electronic components for the control of the behaviour of the vehicle. Examples of such vehicles are high speed missiles, air-to-air missiles, especially homing missiles needing a control unit for finding a target. The term “control unit” referred to herein may also include sensors and other type of equipment of such a vehicle having electronic components.
The invention is particularly applicable to high speed vehicles, since the cooling problem is more accentuated for such vehicles. However, the invention is not restricted thereto. Such high speed flying vehicles, such as high speed air-to-air missiles, are heated substantially during the flight thereof through aerodynamic resistance. This heating is combined with a heat generation by the electronic components themselves, so that these components will in absence of cooling measures quickly arrive to temperatures exceeding the acceptable operation temperatures of these components. Furthermore, there is a continuous aim of miniaturising such control units and the electronic components thereof for each new generation of such equipment, and the power consumption thereof is continuously increasing. This makes it very important to be able to efficiently cool these electronic components, especially since there is a desire to use so-called industry tempered components being much less costly than so-called military components but having a lower temperature resistance.
Cooling methods, active as well as passive, are known.
A passive method is known through US 2003/0047103 A1, in which a heat sink is used for draining heat from the electronic components.
Active methods using cooling by the circulation of gas are also known.
A disadvantage of these known methods is that they require a cold surface or mass for functioning. This makes it impossible to use them in the high speed missiles now built, since they will not have any cold surface or mass for cooling purposes.